TWO emphatic facts have called forth the production of this work.
First, the need of more religious teaching or Bible instruction
in the home, and second, the hearty and universal endorsement by Bible
students and prominent Sunday School workers everywhere of
the plan of teaching which forms the basis of this work.

In this hustling, bustling age, the home where father and mother took
time to gather daily with the children around the family altar, is in danger
of passing away. It is said on good authority that in ninety-two
per cent of the Christian homes of America there is no family worship conducted.

Dr. John Timothy Stone says: "The boy and girl of today have very
little incentive to form the habit of the devotional life. Aside from the
influence of a, brief hour in Sunday School, or a special course or occasional
address in school, they have little opportunity of learning Bible truth.
From parents and in the home they gain little in this line, for life has
grown so complex and busy. There are some things which have gone from us
by default which we must recover, and worship in the home is prominent
among them. As the Almighty has made the home the unit of society, so we
must let genuine, natural, religious training begin there."

While in many respects, to quote a, prominent educator, "This is the
century of the child, and public attention is being aroused as never before
and concentrated upon the proper education and training of the child,"
the fact remains that as far as religious education and training in the
home is concerned, it is sadly neglected. Parents-Christian parents-are
delegating too much of the religious training of their children to the
Sunday School teacher or someone else.

Then, too, in many places, our children are denied the privilege of
Bible instruction in the public schools. In all the Christianized countries
of the world the United States is the only one where the Bible does not
form part of the daily curriculum of the schoolroom. If our children thus
grow up, is there not grave danger that the neglect of God's Word will
deprive us of those glorious privileges and liberties for which our forefathers
laid down their lives?

The peace and safety of any nation on the face of the globe depends
more upon their attitude to God's Word than upon their armies and navies.
Abbott, in his introduction to his history of Italy, after reviewing the
fierce struggles and bloody persecutions that rent Europe in the middle
centuries, says: "The one great truth taught in all these annals is
that there is no hope for the world but in the religion of the Bible."

The need for such a work on the Holy Bible is further emphasized by
the fact that comparatively few parents, however anxious they may be to
give their children religions instruction, have no practical method or
well defined plan for teaching the great fundamental truths of the Bible.
The need and the importance of some plan of Bible study interesting to
the children and helpful to the other members of the family are both recognized
and to a great extent met in this volume.